Starbucks Union

At the Starbucks I worked at, as a barista, there was no drug testing ever performed. They certainly did not do random drug testing, either.

As far as drug testing if you get injured while working, I do not know what the policy is.

But Starbucks is not really a laid-back place to work. It would depend on the store and who the manager is, as well as the co-workers. Expect to work hard for low pay. Oh, and Starbucks will not give references, as a matter of policy. They will verify your dates worked and what the position was, but that's about it. They won't say whether you were a good or bad worker. Also, I don't know what state you are in, but with Starbucks, there is no guaranteed minimum number of hours. At Albertsons, you are guaranteed a certain minimum number of hours as per your union contract. But expect to get under 20 hours per week.

Uh, here's a simple solution: Stop smoking pot?

Keep up the smoking habit and your starbucks paychecks will go *poof* out the door and into a doober.

It's really that simple.

Working at Starbucks does not pay enough to support a drug habit which is why I think they don't even bother with testing.

If you are looking for a non-RUSH RUSH RUSH job then don't bother applying at Starbucks either because we work pretty damn hard.

No, they don't do an accredited Drug Test on any employees, even management as far as I know. Of course, we've had to let people go because believe it or not, smoking pot interferes with your physical abilities, not to mention mental. If you can manage yourself in a fast paced environment, I would say go for it... but it's probably best just to slow your toke.

southbux, what wage would you like to see? You say a lot about how you don't think you're getting paid enough. What wage would allow you to support yourself, a goldfish, and a drug habit?

Well, I don't know about the goldfish or the drug habit, but being able to support myself would be really cool. I don't think everyone who lands a job at Starbucks should start at twelve bucks an hour and expect a two dollar raise every six months.

What makes me mad is that I have worked for Starbucks for two years now, I've been a shift for a year and a half, and yet I'm making seventy five cents more than what I started at. Every review that I have had has resulted in a difference of pennies in my payrate. The biggest raise I have received was for a cost of living adjustment (that occured suspiciously after the NYC organizers went public I might add).

The system could be improved upon. Would it break the bank if we were able to attain a seventy-five cent raise every six months for top performance or even a dollar raise for the people who go above and beyond? Or if you like the socialist union model where for example, everyone gets a quarter raise every three months regardless of performance. There are many different things we can do to make this thing livable and workable for everyone.

Problem is we can't even talk about ways to fix our problems and address our grievances because Starbucks is not willing to do so. This is not a case a union asking for too much and holding out to get a little extra. Starbucks refuses to even recognize the union. They could, it wouldn't be hard and it wouldn't cause anyone to go out of business.

So now because of Starbucks actions in its refusal to recognize the union and its blatant discrimination against pro-union workers, Starbucks and the union are going to fight. At the end of that fight they will either be carrying cold dead Wobs out from behind the counter or we will be discussing with Starbucks exactly how the pay scale should be re-structured.

That's very strange. I was looking over some old stubs of mine.

In California, minimum wage is $6.75. My starting wage was $7.25. Over my short time with the company, I have boosted myself to $9.00 [ not including tips ]. Our tips never seem to fall below $1 an hour, even in the worst of weeks, so at minimum, I'm making $10.00 an hour. This is all with a little bit of initiative and determination. Maybe in NYC, your situation is a little bit different, and I'd be delighted to figure out how different, but even then, raises are not required.

Offering a $0.75 raise seems insane. Even if you were an exemplary employee, seventy-five cents is steep. A quarter raise for every partner, nomatter their performance? I'd like to call that system "encourage mediocracy". You can always challenge your reviews. Sometimes it's not really worth it, because you're still not going to get an average that will make a difference in your raise, but if it does, I definately suggest challenging.

Analyzing your eligibility for a $0.75 raise, assuming 1/3 of your partners got that raise, and the other two thirds averaged a $0.50 raise, here's how it would pan out. My store has 28 employees. Excluding the manager and assistant manager, that would be 26 people getting raises. Assuming everyone started at the exact same time, and all started at 7.25 [supervisors not making any more than baristas for the example]. You would have approximately 8 people making $8/hour, and the remaining 18 making $7.75/hour. Every hour that would cost the store an extra $15 in labor [if everyone worked at the same time]. Let's assume that 10 people at any given day, are not scheduled to work. 18/28 employees would be working for 80 hours [my store has approximamtely 80 labor hours a day]. For my example, we'll assume that both manager and assistant manager are working coverage for that day. This will knock 16 hours off of the payroll labor hours. At 64 hours of coverage [ this is the least amount of labor coverage my store should have and not be understaffed ] it would cost an extra ~~$615 [$617.14] per day to give the raises you're requesting.

That's pretty detrimental to profits, and would require that you work more vigorously, endangering your health even more than you already claim it is endangered.

Again, I think the situation is pretty good, but maybe things are different in NYC.

cheapwh0re- I haven’t done the math. So I’ll just trust your figures for now.

But lets put them into perspective.

1. We don’t know what percentage of costs salary is, so we are not in a position to determine whether an extra $620 per day is “detrimental to profits” or not.

2. It would only be detrimental to profits if the per day sales stay constant. However if the increase in pay translates into better service as a result of better moral, then starbucks could expect an increase in customer traffic that would increase in turn per day sales. Or the increase in service might turn into higher sales per customer as customers may be more inclined to linger and make additional purchases. This in turn also could increase per day sales.

In other word the increase in salary may well pay for itself resulting in higher per employee sale margins.

no gods no masters

$620 dollars, no matter where it comes from is still $620 dollars. All other costs aside, let's see how many sales it would take to make that $620. [ Keep in mind, there is no benefit to spending the extra $620 dollars on labor, so there's no factor that would influence how it must be earned. ] My store has an average ticket price of $4.71. That's pretty high for my district, so I'm going to round down to $4.50 for simplicity. To bring the company another $620 for your pay raises, you will need to make approximately [ depending on average ticket ] 138 more sales per day. With 138 more sales per day, you may need to schedule an extra employee for coverage, increasing the cost of labor for that day. Meaning that you will again, have to improve your sales in some way [ be it a higher ticket price, more sales per hour, or increase prices of drinks ] to make ends meet. These proposed raises will indefinately break the bank.
This $620 that I've calculated is only representative of the first raise employees will be seeing. Six months, we will use for the example. Assuming that your turnover is high, you will 10% of your employees stay for at least 1 year [ two raises ]. Factor in the replacement employees recieving one less raise than their previous counterparts, and you're still talking astronomical figures.

A model socialist republic would have clued you in on how wrong you are that incresed wages will pay for themselves in the long run. I'm going to take a ballpark figure [intentionally inflated to your cause] and say that 80% of customers come in for the sole purpose that they want coffee [ I am actually sure that the figure is much, much higher ]. They don't come in to see you, ask you how you're doing, or anything pertaining to you. They want a hot cup of Sumatra, end of story. That leaves [again, this is ballpark] 20% of the customers who do come in based on employee morale [ among other things, but for simplicity, we'll just say it's based on just morale ]. These numbers will fluctuate with time, and they will increase if your employees are happy, this is true, but you seem to misunderstand economics when it comes to about how much these figures will flex. This is no longer your simple supply and demand curves. The supply is infinite, and the demand is fixed. You can't assume that things will fall into place if you throw money at your employees.

With Socialism, you are benefitted with perks in hopes that your performance will increase. Sometimes it does, but more often than not, the populous will realize that they get what they want, nomatter how they perform. Capitolism runs that backwards. This is why capitolism is successful. If your employees exceed your expectations, or meet them at all, they are rewarded. If they don't, they are fired. The system is set up so that it's still practical to reward the parnters that are doing well, whether it be with raises, or promotions. If you really want to excel with what you're doing, you should focus on a promotion rather than a raise...

Basically what you’re saying is that your to lazy or to dumb to find new ways to make up the difference. You’re incapable of increasing the average per customer sales at your store, probably because they are completely out of your control. You’re just lucky your clientele have more buying power. I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a small coffee house that competes with your store and kicks it’s ass. Chances are no one at your store likes working for you. They probably are motivated by fear.

No shit your going to have trouble. Promoting you to management was a big mistake. Firing you would definitely be better for your store than a pay increase.

cheapwh0re - you need to read the research. Incentives do not work in fact they do the exact opposite from what they are purported to.

Now you may find this fact inconvenient and spout a lot of capitalist dogma at me, but the research speaks for itself and what it says contradicts your contentions.

If starbucks wants to sell coffee and not service, it will lose. It’s that simple. The specialty coffee market is very competitive, and those companies that provide the best service are the ones that will compete best in the market.

You can’t be everything to every one. You need to decide what you want Starbucks to be. Starbucks was successful because starbucks tapped an unfulfilled market need. The fast food, fast coffee market is full. You want starbucks to jump in that tank and swim with the sharks, good luck.

But watch you back. Little companies like Gimme coffee in Ithaca, who understand the market and aren’t big whales like starbucks, will jump in and eat you alive as soon as you let your guard down.

People like you, cheapwhore, need to get fired. Before you ruin Starbuck reputation irreversibly.

CheepwhOre - are you kidding me, that’s the name you chose to represent Starbucks? You are a liability if I ever saw one.

You can give me every fucking essay in the world on how incentives do not work, but I have seen first hand that they do. Maybe it's not 100% fool proof, but I can garuntee you that someone who gets 30 hours a week no matter what will NOT work as hard as someone who has to prove themself to get 30 hours. Why would they? Humans don't normally think, "Hmmm, I'm going to get 30 hours next week no matter how good or bad my performence is this week, I think I'll step it up a notch." I was getting 12-15 hours last fall, then when I improved, I got 30. This sudden raise in hours made me continue to bust my ass so that I could continue to maintain those hours. So you know what, stop preaching this bullshit communist view of complete equality for all employees, would you like to see some lazy ass partner getting as many hours as you? You know, the guy who doesn't mix the mocha with the shots that he let expire? Yeah, he deffinetly doesn't deserve the hours people like me get.